Chapter 14

The week before the Littles' Market was a busy one at Stuffie Hospital London.

"All hands on deck!" Susie had declared, and the team had come together to create a whole range of stuffies for Isla and Susie to take to the market.

"I don't just want bears," said Susie, "because though bears are cute, Littles often want other options as well. So some bears, some animals, and a handful of fantastical creatures as well—no one can resist a dragon!"

Billie who did the marketing for the business had pulled together a series of postcards, detailing the different services that Stuffie Hospital London provided: stuffie restoration; mechanism repairs; and stuffie design and creation. She'd run through the marketing spiel with Isla so many times that Isla could probably recite it in her sleep at this point.

"The thing is," said Susie, "that though we'll have stuffies to sell, that's not really what our main service is. Littles almost always have a very well-loved stuffie who's falling apart, and highlighting that they can send them somewhere that will look after and cherish them during their time away, is probably where we'll get the most repeat business."

It wasn't something they did very often, go elsewhere. Billie had done a lot of work at one of the local children's hospital, where they donated a lot of stuffies, and Essie was currently working on a window display in a very fancy department store in London, but for the most part, clients came to Stuffie Hospital London, not the other way around.

So Isla was actually rather nervous about the whole event. She was used to being cool, calm and collected, in her office, dealing with often stroppy celebrities. A crowd of excitable Littles, however, was a whole other board game.

Littles rarely had the opportunity to gather en masse, and the market was already sold out. Isla shuddered, thinking of how much she was going to have to talk to people she didn't know. If it had been for anyone other than Rachel, she probably would have asked Susie if she could take someone else.

Instead, Isla had gone into full preparation mode. She'd practiced what she needed to say, over and over and over in the mirror. She'd even done trial runs with the Restoration Hub staff, Charlie, Daniel and Jamie. They'd all informed her that she seemed very put together and knowledgeable, and reassured her that no one was going to throw themselves at her and ask if they could call her Mommy.

"They'll be excitable, sure," said Charlie. "But most Littles are also super shy, and some of them won't be in Littlespace at all. It's such a personal, often vulnerable, headspace to be in. I don't really ever go Little unless I'm with my partner."

Jamie nodded. "I mean, I go Little a bit more, but not massively so. I think the main thing you need to focus on is having your patter down. If you know your patter, then you won't panic every time someone comes up to your table; you can just go into automatic mode, and that'll give you the bandwidth to deal with any further enquiries."

"How's Rachel doing?" asked Daniel. "I imagine that she's pretty stressed at the moment."

"Just a bit!" laughed Isla, although she soon sobered up as she remembered how sleepy Rachel had been during their call the night before. "She's been staying up way too late, and I had to start imposing a curfew, or she'd have kept herself up until the wee hours of the morning every day! And she really can't function on less sleep."

Rachel really couldn't. She started getting dizzy, and Isla remembered one memorable occasion during Covid when she'd fallen asleep in the middle of a Zoom call, and only roused when Isla hurriedly poked her.

It had meant that their nightly calls, where Isla worked her way through the Beatrix Potter's entire oeuvre, had been somewhat shortened. If she was lucky, she'd get a snatched goodnight, and sometimes Rach fell asleep and missed the calls altogether.

Isla wasn't cross, of course she wasn't, but it was bringing home to her how difficult it was to keep up a long-distance relationship—especially when the two of them worked so much during the week anyway.

She'd found herself sat in her bed, looking at the empty space beside her, and missing Rachel with all of her heart.

She'd known that it was going to be difficult, but she hadn't realized quite how difficult. And spending weekends in Brighton with Rachel only seemed to make it worse. Leaving each Sunday night was getting harder and harder.

"You'll be fine," said Daniel gently. Isla knew that he'd recently fallen in love with a Little one, and he and Mossie seemed super happy together. "Try and be understanding, and help her see that taking a break, once in a while, is okay."

Rach was so tired at the moment, that she seemed to permanently be in Big space, and Isla was looking forward to after the first event, when she'd be able to persuade Rach to have a full Little day with her. A Daddy-princess day, she was calling it in her head. But until then she'd be the most supportive Daddy she could be. She'd already organized a shop to be delivered to Rachel that evening, because with her ADHD she was so hyperfixated on the market, that Isla wasn't sure she'd be eating if Isla wasn't poking her daily.

Yes, a Daddy-princess day would do nicely. Be exactly what Rachel needed.